How to Read a Wine Label

Say you're in the wine store and you want to buy something new. You have nothing to go by outside of the label. Will the label tell you anything you should know?

We were asked this question by Terry Gross on NPR's "Fresh Air" recently and we realized that, surprisingly, we'd never been asked that before. We are often asked how to read labels -- whole books have been written about that. Ms. Gross's question was simpler yet far broader. In a sea of wine labels, are there certain things to look for -- across the board, country to country? We've thought a lot about it, and here's what to look for and what to ignore. There are a million caveats and exceptions, but here's some general advice:

Vintage. This is actually the first thing we look for ourselves. You don't need to have a vintage chart in your pocket or care whether 2001 or 2002 was a better year in the Sierra Foothills. The vast majority of wines at the store are meant to be drunk right away, so you want to make sure the wine isn't too old, particularly if you're buying it expecting lively, fresh fruitiness. We routinely see five-year-old Pinot Grigio and two-year-old Beaujolais Nouveau at stores, for example, so as soon as we see that kind of age on wines like those, we know we can skip them and move on (and possibly not shop there again).

Alcohol content. Too many wines today have too much alcohol, which leaves them unbalanced. Sure, there are some classic wines with fairly high alcohol levels, but many of today's regular table wines -- Merlot, Chardonnay, Shiraz, Zinfandel -- have levels at 15% or above. Some of those might be terrific, but if we had nothing else to go on, we'd look for alcohol content at about 14% and below.

Critter labels. In the past few years, there has been a profusion of inexpensive wines with cute animals on the labels. We have tasted these wines and they are generally less attractive than the labels. Of course, some good wines happen to have animals on the labels -- consider Stag's Leap or Iron Horse from California, for instance -- but, especially when it comes to less-expensive wines, we'd avoid wines where the cute animal seems to be the main point of the wine. A humdinger of a tale about the animal is often a clue that this is a wine to avoid.

Geography. The more specific the better. A wine that says it's from Napa is probably a better bet than a wine that simply says it's from California. It's the same way all over the world. Unfortunately, this will also probably be reflected in the price, so this might not tell you much about value. There are fabled vineyards around the world, plots of land famous for producing high-quality grapes. If you care enough to know a few of these, they might help you make an educated guess about quality.

Estate-bottled. This means the people who made the wine also had a hand in growing the grapes on their own land. We generally find this a good sign.

Reserve. On American wines, this doesn't mean anything, so ignore it. There are various rules around the world concerning words like Reserva, but there's no guarantee it means anything in other parts of the world. Unless you know something about the rules concerning, say, Rioja, where it has genuine significance, don't worry about it.

Old vines or vieilles vignes. Theoretically, older vines produce fewer, but more flavorful, grapes, but the problem is that no one has defined what an "old vine" is, so anyone can put this on the label. Again, ignore it.

A phone number. This will require some extra time, because we're talking about tiny type on the back of a label, but you'd be surprised how many small-production wines these days include a phone number on the back and an invitation to call the winery. We have found that this is a sign of a highly personal winery. We have called those numbers many times over the years and it's amazing how often the winemaker or winery owner answers the phone.

Details, details, details. When we were young, we were fond of the late Hanns Kornell's Sehr Trocken, one of a handful of sparkling wines he made at his California winery. On the back label was a hand-printed date of when the wine was "disgorged," when the sediment in the neck of a bottle of bubbly was removed and the temporary cap replaced by a real cork. On the front of each bottle was this notation: "Naturally fermented in this bottle," which was a big deal because that's the way real Champagne is made, with the bubbly fermentation taking place in the bottle and not in a huge tank. We love information like that and some wineries still give it, including the dates when the grapes were harvested and the wine bottled. Details like these make the point that these things mattered to the winemaker and that he or she understands that they have meaning for the consumer, too. They add to the feeling of the wine's authenticity.

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